Language Criticism and the Usage Panel

1. The Role of Language Criticism in a Multicultural Society Language Criticism and the Usage Panel November 12, 2008

2. Today’s Questions • What issues do languages critics care about? • Why do they care about those issues? • Why have the concerns of traditional language critics become so uninteresting? • Do we as a culture care about our language anymore? • What do we learn about these issues from a longitudinal study of a dictionary’s usage panel?

3. Language Criticism in History • In every age, language criticism has been concerned with issues that in retrospect often seem incomprehensibly trivial. —G. Nunberg • Selected issues of eighteenth-century language critics: • Jonathan SwiftBritish author: mob (mobile vulgus), pozz (positive) • Samuel Johnson British lexicographer: eccentric (meaning odd) • Noah Webster American lexicographer: British spellings, e.g., honour and theatre • Benjamin Franklin, American statesman, linguist: notice (as a verb)

4. Language Changes • Grammar change is natural and inevitable. • We see this by comparing Shakespearean English to current English: • Don Pedro: Runs not this speech like iron through your blood? • Claudio: I have drunk poison while he uttered it (Much Ado, Act 5, Scene 1) • Innovations may disappear (like pozz) or they may become respectable (like mob). • Today’s nonstandard English will be tomorrow’s standard English.

5. Nonstandard English • The ISIS construction • Well, the thing is is that um I basically—I basically know how much I have, right? • Hypercorrect subjective case • Some bad things did happen between him and I that really affected both him and I in a painful way. • Would have-would have counterfactuals • If I would have known about this book, I would have used it when he was 20 months old. • Good of a • Just how good of a bet are these Lotto tickets?

6. So why Study Language Criticism? • Uninteresting issue: • The particular usage issues that critics seize on. • Interesting issues: • The social issues symbolically at stake. • The arguments that the critics use when they reject or recommend specific usage practices. • These arguments assume: • Grammar is logical. • Latin is the model language.

7. Social Issues in Language Criticism • Usages are linked to social groups. • Swift disliked words used by the idle aristocracy. • Webster disliked conformity to the British model. • Generally, social critics ignore usage habits of traditionally recognized oppressed groups. • Usage critics tend to target the usage habits of public figures. • Another favored target: privileged groups, like teenagers, academics, New Agers.

8. Usage Critics Target Linguistic Habits of Privileged Groups • ‘New age speak’. Own your feelings. Passive-aggressive. Project. Process. In a good space. Vent. Work through your issues. • ‘Youth speak’. I spaced it. I’m like, ‘Oh my God’. You know what I’m saying? • ‘Politically correct speak’. Differently abled. The prison community. Eurocentric.

10. The Arguments Used by Critics • Language criticism in the British tradition assumes a shared conception of intellect: knowledge of Greco-Roman history, Latin, western philosophy and rhetoric. • Talk about grammar had intellectual merit. • John Stuart Mill, British utilitarian philosopher, says in Philosophical Investigations (1843): “the structure of every sentence is a lesson in logic”. • That means there should always be a ‘right answer’ in grammar.

11. Q1. Which sentence is (traditionally) considered correct?

12. Q2. You knock on your friend’s door and she says, ‘Who’s there?’ You should say:

13. Q3. Which of these sentences is correct?

14. Q4. Which of these two sentences is correct?

15. The Prestige of Latin • Educated British citizens were typically fluent in Latin and steeped in Roman literature. • In 1844, British magazine Punch publishes a caricature of British general Charles Napier, with the caption Peccavi, referring to his annexation of Sindh, Pakistan. • Latin was the language against which others were judged. • As the British class system breaks down in the 20th century, so does traditional language criticism.

16. The Decline of Grammar • Nunberg: “If we are bent on finding a decline in standards, the place to look is not in the language itself but in the way it is talked about.” • An example. Agreement between a pronoun and anyone, each person. Everyone should take his/their test.

17. Modern English Usage by H.W. Fowler Each and the rest are singular; that is undisputed; in a perfect language there would exist pronouns and possessives that were of as doubtful gender as they, and yet were, like them, singular; i.e., it would have words meaning himself-or-herself or his-or-her [...] We lack the power of saying in one word his-or-her. There are three makeshifts: A, as anybody can see for himself or herself; B, as anybody can see for themselves, and C, as anybody can see for himself. No one who can help it chooses A [...] it is so clumsy as to be ridiculous [...] B is the popular solution. It sets the literary man’s teeth on edge [...] C is here recommended. It involves the convention that where the matter of sex is not conspicuous or important, he and his shall be allowed to represent a person instead of a man.

18. The Harbrace College Handbook (1950s) In formal English, use a singular pronoun to refer to such antecedents as anyone, someone and nobody. In informal English, plural pronouns are occasionally used to refer to such words.

19. No one Finds Grammar Interesting anymore Nunberg: “The point of traditional grammar was to demonstrate a way of thinking about grammatical problems that encouraged thoughtful attention to language, not to canonize a set of arbitrary rules and strictures.”

20. Grammar as an Old-Fashioned Pursuit • Good grammar becomes one of many values that liberal America has forsaken. • Grammar is viewed as something that schools used to teach, along with moral values, etc. • Grammar becomes identified with conservative politics.

21. Grammar and Conservatism The fact that some people are too thickheaded to grasp, for example, that ‘anyone’ is singular, as the ‘one’ in it plainly denotes, does not oblige those who know better to tolerate ‘anyone may do as they please’ [...] And don’t let fanatical feminists convince you that it must be ‘as he or she pleases’, which is clumsy and usually serves no other purpose than that of placating the kind of extremist who does not deserve to be placated. —John Simon, former theater critic, New York magazine

22. What is the function of a dictionary? • Users of monolingual dictionaries are highly literate. • They use for the dictionary for guidance in verbal self-presentation. • What’s the plural of rhinoceros? • What does nonplussed mean? • What does internecine mean? • How does one pronounce hegemony? • Should I say a person like me or a person such as myself?

23. A Big Lexicographic Failure • In 1961 Merriam-Webster publishes the Third International Dictionary. • Influenced by Chomsky’s linguistics, its editors take a descriptive approach: they include substandard words and abandon labels like improper, colloquial, incorrect. • Webster’s Third is widely attacked. The NY Times says: • Webster’s has, it is apparent, surrendered to the permissive school [and] reinforced the notion that good English is whatever is popular. It can only accelerate the deterioration of the English language.

24. The Usage Panel • In 1968, the Houghton Mifflin Company decides to try a third way in its American Heritage Dictionary. • Instead of prescribing or describing, it tells readers what a select group of scholars says about controversial usages. • These scholars comprise the Usage Panel: 175 writers, public figures, academics.

25. The Results • In 1988, for the AHD third edition, Nunberg asks the panel members to rule on many of these usages again. • He also asks them some new questions. • Did the panel become more permissive? Yes and no. • Their responses differed according to whether they were thinking about traditional usage concerns or usage issues inspired by political ideology.

26. Usage Recommendations Based on Latin Etymology • Anxious for ‘eager’ (angare ‘press tightly’) 1968: 23% 1988: 52% • Aggravating for ‘irritating’ (adgravare ‘make worse’) 1968: 43% 1988: 71% • Transpire for ‘occur’ (transpirare ‘breath across’) 1968: 38% 1988: 58%

27. More Latin Etymology Issues • Cohort for ‘companion’ (cohors ‘a group’) 1968: 31% 1988: 71% • Decimate for ‘slaughter the majority of’ (decimare ‘to kill one in ten’) 1968: 26% 1988: 66%

28. Has our Panel SimplyBecome more Permissive? • The answer is not that simple. • The panel is still strict on certain issues: • Disinterested for ‘uninterested’. Most Americans are disinterested in politics. 1968: 7% 1988: 11% • Hopefully as a sentence adverb. Hopefully, we will not have to leave early. 1968: 44% 1988: 27%

29. Why is the Panel Giving up on Latin then? • The diminished relevance and authority of Latin and Greek, and of European history, as a shared cultural context. • Panelists appear to agree that etymology can help us figure out what a word means, but not what the word should mean. • And some panelists lack the linguistics background to reason well about language issues.

30. The Panel Applies some Rules Mechanistically • They occasionally ‘hypercorrect’: • Splitting an infinitive. (to boldly go) It appears that much of my life as a journalist has been devoted to sedulously setting off firecrackers. Acceptable to 28% • Modifying an absolute property (very false) The American Constitution is still nearly unique in that it offers no self-destruct mechanism. Acceptable to 28%

31. Rigid Adherence to Traditional Norms • There’s not much intellectual merit in many of the usage guidelines that the panel is providing. • When they consider the usage issues, the panelists make comments like, “The shade of Sister Petra sits watch over this one.”

32. What do the Usage Critics Care about? • They put thought into questions involving feminist usage issues. • These questions were new in 1988. • These questions involved: • The feminine suffix -ess • The use of the masculine pronoun as a generic pronoun

33. The Feminine Suffix -ess • When the ambassadress arrives, please show her to my office. women: 13% men: 28% • Mary is such a charming hostess that her parties always go off smoothly. women: 74% men: 92% • His only hope now is to marry an heiress. women: 92% men: 95% • Mr. Bhutto’s daughter and political heiress, Benazir Bhutto, returned to Pakistan in April. women: 28% men: 37%

34. Which Pronoun? • A writer who draws upon personal experience for____material should not be surprised if reviewers seize on that fact. his: 50% other singular (e.g., his/her): 48% their: 2% • A taxpayer who fails to disclose the source of____income can be prosecuted under the new law. his: 46% other singular (e.g., his/her): 53% their: 1%

35. Which Pronoun? • A patient who doesn’t accurately report____sexual history to the physician runs a risk of misdiagnosis. his: 37% other singular (e.g., his/her): 61% their: 2% • A child who wants to become a doctor should be encouraged by___ parents and teachers. his: 36% other singular (e.g., his/her): 60% their: 2% • Conclusion. Where a gender bias is possible, the neutral form is used.

36. Conclusions • “The feminist program has [...] succeeded, in that it has forced most literate speakers to reflect on the way in which usage might reinforce gender stereotypes.” (Nunberg) • There is no longer a shared conception of literacy or culture. • We live in a socially and culturally fragmented society. • Public discourse is now about the competing needs and rights of social groups.

37. Conclusions • Today’s language criticism is radical rather than conservative. • It aims at eliminating usage habits perceived as perpetuating negative attitudes toward traditionally recognized oppressed groups. • It has been parodied as ‘political correctness’ but this usage program is the only form of language criticism that we actually practice these days. • When we talk about ‘p.c.’ language issues, we’re talking about vital social concerns.